


Heartlines

by mia2323



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Bisexuality, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 07:19:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5488529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia2323/pseuds/mia2323
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knows all the bones and organs in the human body. She loves the heart, most. [Character Study. Bellarke. Modern AU.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartlines

**Author's Note:**

> [Soundtrack: "Heartlines" by Florence and the Machine, "Holding a Heart" by Girl Named Toby, "Heartbeats" by Jose Gonzalez, "Heart It Races" by Dr. Dog & "Satellite Heart" by Anya Marina]
> 
> [Hi! So I decided to do a bit of a character study, since they interest me so much. This one kind of rambles on but I hope from the title and the soundtrack, you understand what the story is. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think! Comments make my heart sing. All grammar mistakes are mine [[seriously this was so rushed and I was too excited to go through and edit it a billion times.]]]

Clarke Griffin knows all the bones in the human body when she’s seven.

She often sits on the playground mumbling off each bone as children laugh and run around her. 

What interests her most is that a cage of rib bones and other various parts protects her heart. She thought for the longest time that her heart was protected with bones of steel and high tides of organs and veins. None of this is true. 

She checks her pulse as she stares at the hands of her watch just to make sure it’s still there.

Sometimes, she makes Wells press his ear against her chest when she can’t hear it. It sends her into a panic and it makes her pulse rush quickly. 

Wells giggles as he tells her that he can hear her heart just fine. 

She makes him check twice, counting the beats as he does so.

…  
…

Her mother is a doctor. So when her mother is on call during the weekends, she is too.

She runs through the halls with her dolls and giggles when a few of her favorite nurses stick their tongues out at her. She likes Marcus Kane best because he always gives her dolls.

He gave her one of her favorite dolls when she found him and her mother in a small room together. Their breathing was harsh and her mother was covering Marcus’s body behind her naked one as soon as she entered the room with laughter on her tongue. 

“Your mom was just giving me an exam.” She thinks it’s a strange and weird but she nods anyway. The doll in her hands looks like her. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. “Clarke. Do you understand?”

She looks up then and frowns. “Was she checking your heartbeat?” She looks at her doll. “Wells checks my heartbeat.” She wonders if dolls have heartbeats. She looks up at Marcus with the question on her tongue but no sound comes out. 

Marcus looks at her with a smile that isn’t one he usually gives her. “Yeah.” He says eventually and he plays with one of the curls on her dolls head. “She was checking to see if my heart was working.”

Her eyes grow wide in curiosity. “Was it?” 

The weird look is still on his face as he answers. “It is when she’s around.”

It doesn’t make sense to her. 

…  
…

Her favorite days are when she painting with her father.

They make a whole show of it. He sets up his canvas next to hers and places paint cans all around them.

She watches his hands as he smears paint across the canvas. He often sings as he does this, too. It makes her giggle and clutch the paintbrush in her own hand clumsily. 

She frowns when she looks at her canvas compared to her own. 

Her father drops his paintbrush and scoops her up. She wraps her arms around his neck. 

He asks her what is wrong and she plays with the collar of his paint-covered shirt. “I can’t paint like you.” She frowns. “I’m not good.”

“Sure you are.” He says with a bright smile. 

“No.” She mumbles out with a frown. “I want to stop.” 

He lets out a breath and hitches her up higher on his side. Her mother stopped picking her up. She’s glad her father hasn’t. “You can’t stop because you’re not the best, Clarke.” He says in his serious voice. She stares at the blue eyes that match her own. “You work harder. Get better. Don’t give up, alright?”

She nods. She feels her heart pumping in her chest. 

“Promise me.”

She nods again. “I promise.” 

There is a distant look in his face as he places her feet back onto the floor. He looks behind them where her mother is standing in the kitchen making dinner.

She goes back to painting.

 

…  
…

Her mom starts working even more hours.

Her father starts painting with shades of blue. 

…  
…

 

When she’s ten she’s the best speller in class. 

She’s in the finals for the Spelling Bee. 

Her word is: chimerical. 

She stands still and looks into the large auditorium. She looks in the masses but doesn’t understand why she does so. There are two empty seats next to where Wells sits in the front row.

She swallows and speaks into the microphone.

“May I have the definition?” 

The large, bored face of the host sighs before he says. “It means, unreal, imaginary, visionary, widely fanciful, highly unrealistic.” 

She looks at the empty chairs again. She feels tears well up in her eyes but she shakes them off. 

She spells the word right and Wells claps the loudest.

She looses to a girl from another school district on the word, desolate. 

…  
…

She starts ballet dancing.

She enjoys it because it fills up her weekdays and because when she dances, her brain doesn’t think about the empty spaces at home.

She loves dancing to Clair de Lune. She’s obsessed with the song and she even learns it on piano so that when she’s not dancing to it, she can still hum to it. Sometimes, when she’s lying in bed she can feel her heart playing to the beat of it. 

When her dance recital comes up in the spring, she doesn’t save tickets or seats. She doesn’t even tell her parents.

The night passes and goes and she dances in front of strangers. Her heart races as she feels the bright lights on her face and it doesn’t stop until she walks home to an empty and cold house.

…  
…

She breaks her wrist when she’s twelve. 

She was playing outside in the backyard when suddenly, her fingers slipped on the branch she was reaching for and her body falls towards the ground faster than a heartbeat. 

She cries out and suddenly, her father is there.

“Clarke?” His voice is hoarse. She’s holding her arm and sobbing. “What happened?” 

“I fell.” She can’t see anything because her eyes are clouded over. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get over this pain. 

When she’s in the hospital, her legs dangling over the bed they placed her on, she looks into the hallway and sees her mother in her white coat and her father in paint covered clothes. 

“How could you let this happen?” 

Her father is silent. He lets out a breath. “I wasn’t watching her for five minutes, Abby. And like you’re one to give me a lecture about parenting.”

Her mother says something else but she doesn’t catch it. 

Her mother storms off and her father comes back in with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. 

They get ice cream for dinner.  
…  
…

When she’s fourteen she ditches the dolls and starts wearing her hair in one braid, not two.

She’s in eighth grade now and she’s taking high school algebra and Spanish. Wells is right there alongside her, even though he struggles with Spanish verbs and well, everything else.

She also realizes that she likes boys and girls.

“I like both.” She shrugs casually as she erases and fixes Wells verbs on his homework. She pauses and looks up at him. “Is that normal?” 

Wells shrugs but smiles. “Who cares if it isn’t?” 

She drops her pencil. “I don’t know.” She pauses. “I told my dad. He said that it was okay.”

“Good.” Wells pulls his homework back and frowns at what she corrected. “And your mom?” 

She looks down at her own homework. “I don’t know.” She keeps getting the verb wrong for ‘to have’. She angrily erases her writing. “She doesn’t notice me half the time so I didn’t really bother.” 

Wells doesn’t say anything else until they get to the next question in their homework.

…  
…

Her parents stop kissing. They stop dancing around in the kitchen.

They pretend not to notice.

So does she.

…  
…

She’s at a Christmas party at the hospital. 

Her father is chatting up some nurses about his upcoming art show. She’s sipping gradually on the fruit punch in her hand.

She pulls at her dress with the other hand. She’s filling out in places she wasn’t last year. Her hips are bigger and her breasts are larger than she would like.

She sighs and looks around the room. 

“Clarke.”

She turns her head and forces a smile as Marcus Kane comes up to her. His smile is devious. “Mr. Kane.” 

“You look lovely.” 

She nods and turns her head away. He no longer gets her dolls, she’s grateful. 

Marcus is a nice looking man with a charming smile. He is a resident alongside her mother. He’s smart and talkative. She doesn’t know why part of her wants to hate him. Maybe it’s because he’s perfect or maybe it’s because he makes her mother smile a way no one else can.

She walks away from the party and no one really notices.

She doesn’t run in the hallways anymore but she does walk faster than usual. She ends up in a dark and cold area of the hospital. A place where her mother never let her explore as a child. 

She feels the cool air and rubs her arms as she pushes open the door. 

She isn’t sure why the sight of a dead body surprises her. Open and raw and sprawled out like it isn’t a person anymore. She chokes and brings her hand toward her mouth.  
She falls toward the floor and scrambles on her hands to push herself backwards and away from the sight. 

Her breathing is harsh and labored.

That is the first time she sees a dead body.

It’s not the last. 

…  
…

She realizes she likes kissing when she’s sixteen. 

She’s wrapped around Finn Collins as they try to make the most of the small space in his car. 

Finn has outgrown his awkward, lanky stage and now he’s larger and his face makes her pulse race. He has his hands under her shirt and she rubs her lower half against his. It makes him hiss and it makes her heart beat loudly in her ears.

“I want you so bad.”

His voice is like a man praying to be worshipped. She pushes their lips together, hot, wet and dirty. She likes how he hisses when she scratches at his back. She likes how he moans into her air when she sucks on his neck.

She makes him come in his pants, twice.

…  
…

“How are you?” 

She turns her head from the ice cream she’s eating to see Wells staring at her, his cup of vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce sitting forgotten before him. She had been neglecting him lately because Finn has been taking up most of her summer. 

She felt bad when the realization dawned on her. 

“I’m alright.” She shrugs. She hasn’t talked to anyone about how her mother sleeps at the hospital and how her father doesn’t come out of his studio except to eat. She hasn’t talked to anyone about how she feels so completely and utterly alone. “You?”

Wells looks down at his sundae and plays with the spoon, twirling it around in his cup. “My mom is sick.”

She sits up. Her stomach falling at the thought. Her pulse racing. She feels guilty. “What’s wrong?” 

Wells shrugs and lets out a humorless laugh. “Cancer.” He shakes his head and finally looks up at her. “In her brain. She has a year or so.”

“Wells.” She reaches her hand out across the table. She places her fingers onto his wrist and swallows as the feeling of his pulse racing. He’s upset. He’s tired. He’s sad. She doesn’t know how she didn’t see any of it before. “What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing.” He gives her a sad smile. It makes her think about when they were kids. Young and childish and carefree. Now they are anxiety ridden, scared and wishful children who are trying to be adults. 

She sighs and lets out a breath. “Wells.” 

“I don’t know.” The phrase doesn’t sound well from his mouth. Wells wasn’t one who didn’t know anything. Even in things he didn’t know well, he succeeded in. He never was bad at words. It makes her insides shrivel up. “I just don’t know.” 

She abandons her ice cream and moves toward his side of the bench. She wraps her arm around his shoulder and presses her nose into his throat. 

He gives out a shaky exhale and starts to cry.

She counts his heartbeats until they even out. 

…  
…

The first time she has sex she can’t feel anything but her pulse racing.

She’s lying beneath Finn and all she can think of is how perfect he is. His hair is slightly in his eyes and she giggles as she pushes it out of the way. He leans down and kisses her sweetly.

“I love you.” His voice is hoarse and weak and he pushes into her then. He gasps and grabs onto her hips before he slowly pulls out only to push back in. 

He moves slowly and she feels like she’s floating.

He pants in her ear and she focuses on the sound. She relishes in it.

“Fuck, Clarke.”

_Fuck, Clarke._

She moans finally as she feels him continue at his lazy, slow pace. She wants more but she doesn’t voice this.

She moans and bites into his ear and finally, he comes. 

She’s sweaty and so is he.

She breathes out as he lays his head onto her chest, her fingers coming up to play with his hair.

…  
…

She’s at the country club with Wells when a waiter comes up to them with a frown in her brow and tan skin. 

“So, are you the girl fucking my boyfriend?” 

She chokes on her water. “Excu-excuse me?” 

The girl shakes her head and stands up straighter. She’s intimidating and pretty at the same time. “I asked a question. Don’t make me ask it again.” 

She sits up in her chair. Wells is sitting up too, his Ray Bans hanging low on his nose. “I heard your question.” She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t get how it appli-.”

“Are you fucking Finn Collins or are you not?” The girl yells out, causing a few people around them to stop eating and stare. 

She can feel Wells eyes on her but she doesn’t look at him. She focuses on the dark eyes of the girl before her. She can’t really feel anything and part of her wants to ask Wells to check her heartbeat but part of her wants to get her hearing checked because there is no way what she heard is true. 

It can’t be.

“What?”

The girl looks at her. The fierce, intense look in her eyes, fleeting. She looks sad, young and tired. “You are.” It’s not a question or a remark. It’s a word of fact. “I can’t believe it.”

She opens her mouth but it’s no use. The girl turns around and leaves.

She feels her heart slamming against her rib cage.

It’s times like these that she wishes her heart was protected by something else.

…  
…

Finn calls her that night.

She doesn’t answer.

She doesn’t answer the night after that.

Or the night after that.

Or the night after _that._

…  
…

She learns in the fall about Raven Reyes. She’s fierce, loud, a cheerleader and anti social.

She also has English with her. 

They don’t talk until the fourth day of class.

“Can you stop looking at me like that?” 

Her eyes widen as she shoves her textbooks into her arms. “Like what?” 

Raven rolls her eyes and places a hand onto her hip. “Like I’m wounded or something.” She pauses and her eyes grow softer. “Because I’m fine, alright?” Another pause. “Are you?” 

She shrugs. She’s been dodging Finn for weeks now. “I guess.” She places her textbooks against her chest. “I’m Clarke.” 

Raven rolls her eyes. “I know who you are.”

She sighs and blows a harsh breath of air causing her bangs to spring up from her forehead. “We deserve a do-over. One without stupid boys with stupid hair and what have you.” She stands up taller and sticks out her hand. “So, I’m Clarke.”

Raven lowers her eyes at her hand but seconds later accepts the gesture. “Raven.”

And that’s how she becomes friends with Raven Reyes.

…  
…

In October, her parents get a divorce. 

It’s strange and not strange that she finds comfort in Raven’s small house. Her feet in Wells lap and her crying eyes pressed into Raven’s thigh.

She cries for three days. 

Her mother doesn’t cry once.

…  
…

She’s cheering on the sidelines as Raven throws her pom-poms in the air.

She laughs when Raven sticks her tongue out and makes a makeshift gun with her fingers toward her head. Raven hates being a cheerleader but her birth mom was a cheerleader and in some weird sense, she feels close to her mom by doing something that’s absolutely against who she is as a person.

She doesn’t get it but Wells does. 

Wells does a lot of staring at Raven. This is something Raven had decidedly ignored because she’s still hurt from Finn.

She’s still hurt from Finn but she doesn’t do much about it because there isn’t much to do except keep her heart locked closer. 

That thought is in her mind when she runs into Lexa Woods that night on her way back from the bathroom.

She realizes she’s fucked when the brunette smiles in her direction.

…  
…

Lexa Woods goes to Mount Weather. She’s a fierce, quiet and beautiful. 

She’s also the first girl Clarke kisses and when Lexa sucks on her pulse point, she curses at whoever is above. 

The walls she built after Finn are slowly falling down at Lexa’s feet. 

…  
…

She gets better at painting.

Her fingers itch for paintbrushes and more than likely you’ll always find her with paint hidden somewhere behind her ear and underneath her fingernails. 

She finds peace when she’s painting. She doesn’t know if this can be said the same for her father.

…  
…

Her mother announces over dinner that she’s seeing Marcus Kane.

She doesn’t look up from her burnt piece of chicken as she nods.

Marcus moves in a few months later. He takes up space in ways she didn’t know a person could take up space. 

They kiss often. They dance in the kitchen. They laugh and they love.

She spends less and less time at home. 

...  
…

Her father starts throwing paint at canvases. 

He claims that it’s a stress reliever but she knows it’s because her mother is getting married again.  
His finished canvas is covered in blues and grays.

It’s his biggest hit.

…  
…

In January when she’s seventeen, she gets a call at midnight. 

She mumbles and feels Lexa sigh from her spot beside her, asleep. She reaches for her phone and glares at the bright light from her iPhone. She smiles at the picture of Wells laughing on her screen before she accepts the call. 

“Hello?”

 _“Clarke?”_ It’s Raven. She sits up. 

“Raven? What’s going on?”

There’s a silence. Raven breathes deeply into the phone. _“It’s Wells.”_ Her heart is racing. _“His mom died.”_

She almost falls over. “What?” She jumps up and scrambles to get her jeans on the floor. She jumps into them. Lexa is calling her name but she can’t focus on that. “Is he okay?”

 _“No.”_ Raven lets out a breath. _“He locked himself in the bathroom.”_ She can hear Raven hitting lightly what she assumes to be the bathroom door. She’s surprised at how gently Raven’s tone is as she asks Wells to _please open the door._

She closes her eyes as she pictures all her memories of Wells and his mother. She sees them dancing in the kitchen to Ray Charles. She sees them laughing on the porch swing at the house that was too large for both of them. She sees Wells being loved so gently and so greatly. 

“I’m on my way.”

She ends the call before offering Raven much more. She grabs her jacket from Lexa’s desk chair and shoves her arms into it. 

Lexa is sitting up in bed. “Where are you going?”

“Wells needs me.” She can’t find her shoes. She swears under her breath and doesn’t look up until she has her left foot placed into her boot. It’s then she notices the strange look on Lexa’s face. “What?” 

“You care about him.”

“Yeah?” She replies like it’s obvious “He’s my best friend.”

“You’re leaving in the middle of the night for him.”

She shoves her foot into her right shoe. “He needs me, Lexa.” 

“I need you.”

She lets out a breath and rolls her eyes. “I need you too but I’m not having this argument again. When my friends need me I’m going to be there for them.”

She stares at Lexa and lets out a breath. They always have this argument. She doesn’t have time for it though. Wells needs her and she refuses to not be there for him.

She shrugs and offers a tight smile before she leaves.

…  
…

It takes Wells twenty-one hours before he leaves the bathroom. 

She doesn’t think Raven blinks once before the door opens and when it does, she watches as Raven quickly wraps her arms around the boy she knows, for sure now, they both love.

…  
…

When she’s a senior, her artwork wins first prize in the high school art show.

She smiles wide for the cameras as she stands before her piece tilted, “Heartbeats”.

It’s an abstract painting of Wells laughing with his head tilted toward the sky. She smirks at Raven’s smile toward the painting.

Her father comes to her art show.

She doesn’t bother looking for her mother.

And when she comes to a dark and empty house that night, she throws her winning canvas in the garbage. 

…  
…

Lexa does this thing where she kisses down her throat and latches onto her pulse. 

It ignites her and it makes her feel like she’s on fire. 

She likes when Lexa makes her come but she likes even more when she makes Lexa come. Mostly because the look of anger or petty or whatever it is, leaves her face for that brief moment and she looks at peace. 

She lives for that moment.

 _“Clarke.”_ A sigh. A moan. A love.

“I’m here.” She kisses her neck as she pushes her hand between Lexa’s thighs. “I’m here.”

When Lexa comes down for her high, a high that she gave her, she smiles and looks like a sleeping fawn. 

They whisper how much they love another in the dark. Marking the words over each other's bodies with their tongues. 

…  
…

In October she gets accepted to three schools: NYU, Columbia and Georgetown. 

Wells and Raven both get into NYU.

Lexa doesn’t.

…  
…

Lexa not getting into NYU plays a big role in their breakup. There is screaming, ultimatums and harsh words thrown around. 

When she leaves Lexa’s room for the last time, she swears to herself that she is never, ever going to fall in love again. 

There isn’t a point. It didn’t work out for her parents and hasn’t worked out for her.

She will never fall in love ever again.

…  
…

Her father moves to California the summer before she goes to school.

She wasn’t sure why the thought caused her as much pain as it did. Maybe it was the fact that he told her the only reason he stayed so long was for her. Or maybe it was because he told her that his heart was so broken that he couldn’t stand another minute in this town surrounded by memories of the past and wishes for the future. 

She drives him to the airport. All he has is a suitcase full of more paint than clothes and a picture frame filled with pictures of her. He also has the first painting she ever painted tucked away in his wallet. 

She cries as she waves when he walks past security. She wants to yell at her mother. She wants to fix her father’s heart.

Instead she stands rooted in the same spot for two hours. 

…  
… 

Her mother and Marcus drive her to New York that August for school. Marcus tries to make awkward conversation, her mother doesn’t say much except for one-worded answers as she keeps her eyes glued to her phone.

It would bother her but she’s finally having somewhat of a good day. She finally let herself get out of bed and not cry over the loss of Lexa or the ache in her chest over the fact that she’s even farther away from her father. 

Her room is small and she smirks at the side that’s already filled with Raven’s things. There’s a post-it on her new desk that is scribbled in Raven’s handwriting: text me when you get here, loser.

She shoots off a quick text before she helps her mother and Marcus unload her boxes from Marcus’s truck. She nods and smiles politely and she tells them goodbye before Raven get’s there.

She’s placing her bedding onto her bed when Raven rushes in and tackles her. 

Their laughter echoes around them.

It feels fresh. It feels new.

It feels good.

…  
…

“So, when are you going to tell him?” 

Raven looks at her over her sunglasses. They like to spend their evenings lying around Central Park. Raven, reading about something revolving around robots and her reading about the baroque period. It fits them. 

“Tell who, what?” 

She rolls her eyes. If she’s bad at feelings, Raven is one hundred times worse. “Wells. That you, well, you know.”

Raven looks annoyed. “Words, Griffin. Use them.”

She closes her textbook. “Tell him that you love him and whatever.” 

Raven looks down at her textbook. “I’m not doing that.” 

“Raven-.”

“The last time I loved someone, he loved someone else.” Raven doesn’t look at her. It stings anyway. “I’m not letting that happen again.”

She quiet for a while. Her heart pumping in her ears. “You can’t live your life like that. That’s not even living.” 

Raven grows defensive but then again, she always does. “You’re being a bit of a hypocrite, don’t you think?” Raven closes her textbook. “You still cry about Lexa all the time and you refuse to put yourself out there. How is that any different than what I’m doing?”

She shoves up her hands. “Let’s just drop it.”

They do drop it.

Raven, however, kisses Wells that next week.

…  
…

She gets out of her art history lecture early. 

A full half-hour early that she had no clue what to do with herself. She thinks about contacting Wells or Raven but they both are in class. Her friend, Maya is in class, too. 

She huffs and decides to spend the day exploring.

She walks up and down the streets of Manhattan with her headphones in. She smiles at the people she passes and she feels her footsteps become lighter with every step. It feels good. 

She comes to a halt when she sees a small coffee shop that sparks her interest. Grounders. 

It’s tiny and wedged between a chain restaurant and a boutique. She smiles as she pushes open the door. It’s flooded with people. 

There are groups of people at tables and there are people in large plush chairs reading as they sip on their coffee. She smiles at them and walks up toward the counter.

“Hey.” She looks up and comes face to face with a pair of brown eyes and a face full of freckles. “What can I get you?”

It takes her a second before she shakes her head and looks at the chalkboard hanging up behind him. She can’t read it for some reason because her heartbeat is distracting. “Um. A salted caramel latte, to go.” He doesn’t say anything. She looks back to see him staring at her. “What?”

Something washes over his face before he shakes it. “Nothing, sorry.” He totals up her order and goes about making her drink. 

She waits for her drink to be finished and once he holds it over the counter she narrows her eyes to read his nametag before she takes it from him. “Thank you, Bellamy.” 

He nods and heads back to the register to help with another customer. 

She eyes him for a minute more before she turns and leaves. 

…  
…

She’s in the library when she sees him again.

She feels her pulse race and gets annoyed at the fact. She has no idea who this person is except for a barista with unruly hair. 

It fascinates her as she watches him read at the table a few feet away from her. 

She shakes her head and laughs before she goes back to her own reading.

When she looks up an hour later, he’s gone.

…  
…

It’s a Saturday in October and Wells comes into their room without knocking. 

He kisses Raven’s head as she works at her desk and then throws himself onto her bed. He’s silent for a few minutes before het lets out a groan. She knows without looking that Raven is rolling her eyes. She however, looks up from her textbook and smiles tightly at the boy who is currently causing her bed massive disarray. 

“Yes?”

Wells looks guilty slightly but smiles anyway. “It’s a Saturday.”

“Glad you learned how to read a calendar, babe.” Raven says dryly even though she’s smiling that bright smile she only has for Wells.

Wells rolls his eyes. “What I’m saying is that it’s Saturday and we’re in the city that never sleeps and you two are studying. On a Saturday.” 

She turns her head and notices that Raven does the same thing. They are always kind of weirdly in sync. 

They both shrug and decide to go out. Raven claims it’s to make Wells stop being annoying but she knows that it is because Raven would do anything for the people she cares about. Even if that meant giving up a night studying to make them happy. 

They end up at a party in Brooklyn. 

She has a drink in her hand as she moves around the bodies of people taking up the small space.

She runs into a firm chest and feels her breath get stuck in her throat. His hair is still curly and untidy but there is a smile on his face. “Princess.”

This causes her breathing to come back to normal but her heart to pump widely. “Excuse me?” 

He’s smirking and she can tell by the way he sways that he’s slightly, if not completely, intoxicated. “Salted caramel latte’s aren’t on our menu’s.” He pauses. “I totally winged that.”

She feels embarrassed but she stays in her spot. “Why didn’t you say something then?” 

He shrugs. “Thought you were cute.” 

Her face heats up but she shakes off his words. “You don’t know me.”

He looks confused but his eyes somewhat clear up as he stands up straighter. The smirk never leaves her face. “So?”

“So, what?”

He’s smirking. “So, hi.”

It’s annoying and frustrating but that’s how she meets Bellamy Blake.

…  
…

She goes to Grounders to days later. 

Salted caramel latte’s are added in horrible handwriting onto the menu. 

She smiles more than she’s had in weeks. 

…  
…

Wells and Raven start officially date that next weekend. Not that they weren’t but Raven is bad with feelings and now it’s out there and completely official. 

It’s strange and weird and good. Part of her is jealous but not for totally envious reasons. She’s jealous that her best friends are in love and not scared of it.

Being in love terrifies her and she never wants to feel that way again. 

As she likes Wells and Raven’s new relationship status on Facebook, she decides to creep on Lexa.

She doesn’t get very far because Lexa blocked her.

She stares at her computer screen for a long time.

Not loving anyone is easier. Especially compared to what she’s feeling now. 

…  
…

It’s a Friday when she gets the call. 

Her legs are propped up onto the coffee table at Grounders and her textbook is in her lap. She sighs at the noise of her phone but she pulls it out of her book bag. It’s her mother. She debates answering and she accepts the call at the last possible minute.

“Hello?”

There’s a pause. A sharp intake of breath. _“Clarke?”_

She would make a sarcastic reply but the way her mother says her name causes her to sit up in her chair and almost knock over her latte. 

“Is everything okay?” 

She clutches her phone toward her ear. Her mother does the weird intake of breath again. It’s labored and strange and it causes her throat to tighten. 

_“It’s your father.”_ Her mom sobs into the phone. _“He’s – there’s been an accident.”_

Her mother rambles on then. Something about a car accident but she doesn’t hear it. All she hears are the words father and dead. Her father is dead. He’s dead and alone in California. 

She can’t feel anything. She feels her breathing coming out in harsh wisps. Her mother is crying into her ear.

She needs to sit down. She needs to breathe. She can’t. 

Her surroundings become blurry until suddenly Bellamy is there. He’s standing there say something to her but she can’t hear it at all. 

“I can’t breathe.” Her phone is thrown away from her ear. Her heart is pounding. “I can’t breathe.”

Bellamy tries to say something else but she can’t hear him. Her father is dead.

She’s pulled somewhere, maybe in the back of the coffee shop but she isn’t sure. All she sure of is that her father is dead. 

He won’t paint again.

He won’t sing to old jazz songs.

He won’t call her to tell her he made a color that resembles her eyes.

He is dead.

“Clarke?” 

She tries to focus but she can’t. She latches her arms around Bellamy’s neck and cries into the shoulder of a boy she doesn’t even know. “He’s dead. He’s dead.”

Bellamy places a hand onto the small of her back.

He stays with her for minutes, maybe hours. 

He doesn’t pry but she finds herself telling him everything as they sit on the floor in the back of the coffee shop. The smell of coffee is in her nose and her eyes are covered in tears.

…  
…

The funeral for her father is small.

She stands alongside her mother and Marcus.

She wants to blame her mother. Tell her that her selfishness caused all of this to happen. That her reckless affair caused her father to become someone he wasn’t, caused him to move a country away to handle his broken heart.

Instead she’s silent. 

She’s so silent that she doesn’t speak for the next week. 

…  
…

When she gets back to school, Raven is sitting at her desk. 

She wants to voice the thoughts in her head, she wants to scream. But instead she doesn’t do anything except drop her bags and fall into her bed. 

She hears Raven sigh and tap something out on her phone before she pushes herself up and out of her chair. 

There’s a brief movement but before she knows it, Raven is laying behind her. Her tan arm coming up around her waist. She turns herself into the embrace, bringing her head into Raven’s neck.

Raven doesn’t speak for a while but when she does, her eyes are almost closed. “I’m sorry, Clarke.”

Her eyes close.

…  
…

She paces around the front of Grounders. 

Her hair is in a crappy braid and people passing by her on the sidewalk probably think she’s crazy and maybe she is. 

What is she even doing? She doesn’t owe him anything. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. She should just leave and never, ever return. 

“Clarke?” 

She turns her head. Her eyes grow wide and she feels her heart racing. “Uh- hey.”

He looks at her for a second before he nods his head back toward the coffee shop. “You’re scaring my customers.” He pauses and itches at his nose. “Are you coming in or-.”

“My dad died.” She blurts out. “The other day when I was here my mom called me and told me.” 

He doesn’t say anything but his eyes grow sad. 

She lets out a breath. “Right. So I just wanted to-.”

“My mom died.” He says suddenly, as if he just remembered to talk. “Two years ago. It was terrible, my sister made us sit Shiva.”

Her head tilts to the side. “Are you Jewish?”

“No.”

His cheeks are getting red from the cold. She realizes she’s standing out in boots and a full-length jacket and all he has on is a long flannel and an apron. 

“I’m sorry for just, well how I was. I’m not normally like that.” He nods slowly and she nods in return. “So thanks for being there and for well, everything.”

She offers a tight smile and goes to turn around but he calls out her name. She turns and watches him shove his hands into the pockets of his apron. “Are you okay?”

No one has really asked her that. Raven tiptoes around her and Wells tries to offer advice on how to handle it. Her mother got her a therapist in the city but she hasn’t gone yet. She doesn't actually think she will go.

“Not really.”

He lets out a breath and tilts his head toward the coffee shop behind him. “Come inside.”

She lets out a breath and feels her heart slamming against her ribs. “I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I have a paper to write and -.” She pauses and shakes her head. “I could use a latte.”

Bellamy smiles and she realizes it’s the first time she’s actually seen a smile on his face. “On the house.”

…  
…

The bane of her existence is her Art History professor, Cage Wallace.

He’s rude and snobby and totally unfair. 

“I got a 89.7 on my exam and he didn’t round it.”

She lets out a breath. She’s at Grounders and her feet are tucked under her as she watches Bellamy clean the espresso machine. It’s late November and she spends most of her time in the library or in the coffee shop. She usually spends most of her time at the coffee shop if she’s being honest. It’s to the point where she stays until Bellamy closes, like now. 

Bellamy wipes at his brow. He hates cleaning the espresso machine. “Sounds like a dick.”

“He is a dick.” 

He’s silent for a while after that, going about his normal routine. She knows he’s finished when he hangs up his apron. 

Bellamy is attractive but she doesn’t really think about that kind of stuff. She mostly thinks about how he saves her a table in the back of Grounders with a latte. Sometimes he experiments with drinks and has her try them.

She wouldn’t say they were friends but they were something along the sort.

“So.” Bellamy says as he taps his hands against the counter. “My sister has this Christmas play she’s in.” He pauses and she realizes that this is actually a big deal. “Do you want to come with me?” 

She un-tucks her feet from under her. She doesn’t know much about Bellamy’s sister except that she’s in seventh grade and that she’s twelve. “Uh-sure.” She wrinkles her nose. “When is it?”

Bellamy looks down at the watch around his wrist. It’s small and cracked and she’s not sure it actually works. “In twenty-five minutes.”

…  
…

Octavia Blake is exactly like her brother but brighter and surely louder. 

They are currently walking back to Clarke’s dorm. Octavia is going on and on about the play and how she was the first ever lobster to be at the birth of Jesus. 

“Did you see me, Bell?” Octavia does a dramatic sigh. “Ms. Monroe said I was the best lobster.” 

“You were the only lobster.” Bellamy said with an annoyed tone even though the smile on his face was bright and wide. She also knows he has over fifty photos on his crappy prepaid phone.

Octavia rolls her eyes and turns to her. “Did you think I was good, Clarke?” Her eyes are big and bright and youthful. 

She nods and feels a smile grace her features. “I think you were the best.”

Octavia laughs and Bellamy stares at her as they make their way onto the subway.

Her heart doesn’t stop rattling until she’s back in her dorm room with Raven snoring soundly on her bed.

…  
…

When she goes home for Christmas, it’s Marcus who picks her up at the airport.

“Your mom has surgery.” He says as he taps on the steering wheel. “She’s been the ER for about ten hours now.”

She stares out the window. 

It grows silent until Marcus comes up to a red light. 

“I’m sorry about your dad.”

The words swarm around her and make her clutch the buttons of her jacket. Her heart is pounding. She wants to lie down. She wants the words to not apply to her. She wants her father to pick her up. She wants to get one of his paintings for Christmas. She wants him here. 

She instead looks over the center console and stares at Marcus. The man who did so much harm without even realizing it. Or maybe the fucked up thing is that he did realize it. 

“You don’t get to talk about him to me. Ever again.” She turns her head forward as the light turns green. 

They don’t talk until he drops her back off at the airport two weeks later.

…  
…

She declares herself an art education major that spring.

She thinks her father will be proud of her.

…  
…

Bellamy starts dating a girl named Roma. 

She only knows this because he asks her to babysit Octavia on a Saturday afternoon in March.

“I uh - need a babysitter.” His nose has some foam on it. She hasn’t told him because it makes her laugh. “I have a date.”

It startles her but she plays it off. She knows a lot about Bellamy. She knows he has custody of his sister and that he takes night classes at the community college when Octavia takes dance lessons. She knows he drinks soy milk and that he wakes up at six every morning. 

“With who?” She takes a sip of Bellamy’s experimental drink in front of her. A snicker doodle, gingerbread latte. It burns her tongue. 

He shrugs. “Some girl in my class.” He looks slightly annoyed. “I haven’t really been out of the apartment in awhile and Octavia kind of pressured me into it.”

“Your twelve year old sister pressured you to go on a date.” 

He definitely looks annoyed now. “She’s almost thirteen.”

She rolls her eyes but feels something weird in her stomach. Her heart feels strange too but she ignores this. She thinks about what he said and then she thinks about what he’s asking. “You trust me to watch Octavia.” 

It’s not a question.

He doesn’t hesitate on his answer.

“More than most.” He thinks more. “Even Miller.” Nathan Miller is Bellamy’s best friend who happens to be cop for the NYPD.

She plays with the end of her braid. “Why.” 

There’s a red tint to his cheeks as he fiddles with the espresso machine. “You’re my – my person.”

Bellamy isn’t the best with words. He’s also a horrible texter but he always makes sure she texts or calls him when she gets back to her dorm after her night class or Grounders. He also does small things, too. Like cutting the tops off of her muffins or giving her extra foam in her latte’s or tugging on her braid when he’s greeting her when he’s in a rush at the coffee shop. 

She smiles and looks at him, her heart vibrant and loud in her chest. “You’re my person, too.”

…  
…

The wall around her heart falls when Bellamy makes her laugh so much in a stupid pizza joint that she can't breathe.

She watches him push the curls off of his forehead and she can't imagine a life without him.

...  
...

Wells decides the summer before their sophomore year to propose to Raven. 

She jumps up and down and squeals as he tells her this. It’s June and they all are exhausted from summer classes and from looking for apartments but life comes back into her when Wells asks her for her help finding a ring.

“Nothing showy.” Wells says like she doesn’t know Raven at all. “I was thinking maybe one stone or a pearl.”

He looks so childish as they wander the Upper East Side for a ring. His eyes are bright and his smile is too. 

They find the perfect ring at a small boutique on their last hunt for the day when the sky is almost completely black. 

It’s silver and small but it holds two small diamonds surrounding a pearl. She knows that Raven will make a big show of how it is too much but she also knows that her feisty best friend will cherish the ring everyday it’s on her finger.

Wells tucks the ring into his jeans as they leave the store.

And then it happens.

It happens so quickly that she feels like she’s living in a dream.

“Give me your bag.” 

The man has a gun and a black mask covers his face. She feels her heart pumping loudly in her chest. She’s shaking as she clutches her bag before handing it over. Wells must move in front of her, starling their attacker because suddenly, a loud noise is sounding in her ears. 

Her eyes grow wide as Wells drops toward the ground. The masked man looks scared as he stares at the gun in his hands before running off in the other direction, her bag in his possession. 

She doesn’t care about that, though.

She drops toward the ground. “Wells?” He’s coughing and she’s shaking so hard that she can’t even make her fingers still as she brings them toward the forming red circle on his t-shirt. She presses her fingers down. She’s yelling for help and her voice is shaking. 

She’s crying too.

“You have to tell her that I - you-.”

She’s shaking her head. Her fingers covered in blood as she continues to scream for help. 

“Clarke.”

She looks down at him. She grows determined. “You don’t get to die on me.” Her voice is thick. Her heart is growing still. “You are going to marry Raven and I’m going to be there, yeah?” She’s still crying and she watches as a tear falls into the pool of red. “I’m going to be there because you’re not dying on me alright?” 

Wells tries to smile but there’s blood in his mouth. His eyes close and she screams. 

She lowers her head toward his chest and doesn’t hear a single thing.

…  
…

She’s covered in blood and in the ER waiting room.

She taps her feet against the floor and grows anxious as the doors beside her open and close without anyone telling her a single thing. She thinks about the blood.

She thinks about Wells and his heart that held no beat.

“Clarke!”

She turns her head and watches Raven run through the sliding glass doors. She’s in yoga pants and a sports bra. Raven must have been on a run. She wonders how she knows but then she remembers that she called her.

That seems like a lifetime ago.

“Clarke?” Raven is in front of her now. She can’t feel anything.

She presses her fingers to her wrist and tries to count the beats but she can’t. She feels the room shrink in around her.

Wells always counted the beats when she couldn’t, 

And now he’s stretched out and bleeding on an operating table.

She comes back to it when she feels a sharp slap against her face. She clutches her cheek and looks up at Raven. Raven who is usually so fierce and brave is now crying and vulnerable and scared. 

She can’t handle the look. 

She pushes herself up from her chair and tries to control her breathing. “I’m sorry. I tried. I tried-.”

Raven cuts her off but wrapping her arms around her. 

They stand wrapped around one another for hours.

…  
…

She’s staring at the white walls of the hospital when Bellamy finally comes in around one in the morning. 

He’s sweating and his curls are stuck to his forehead. 

He comes directly toward her and tries not to make a sound to disrupt Raven who’s asleep next to her. 

He takes in her clothes. The red surrounding her and gulps. He doesn’t say anything as he offers her his hand. He drags her into the bathroom and gets a wet rag to wipe at her hands. At her face.

The blood makes the water pink in the sink as he dries out the rag.

Her breathing catches and her heart is hammering again. She tries to focus but she can’t. Wells might die. She almost died. Bellamy. Raven. 

She’s been in this position with Bellamy before. “I can’t br-.”

Her lips are covered with another set of warm ones. It takes her a moment until she realizes that Bellamy is kissing her. That Bellamy is breathing for her. That Bellamy is there and with her.

He pulls back and rests his forehead against hers. “You’re okay. You’re with me. You’re okay.”

The words are meant for her but as he presses his head into her collarbone. She wonders if they are for him, too.

She brings her hands to his hair and plays with it.

…  
…

Wells Jaha proposes to Raven Reyes nine days later on his hospital bed.

Raven rolls her eyes but she cries as she lets Wells put the ring onto her finger.

…  
…

They don’t talk about the kiss. 

It’s just something that happened when she couldn’t breathe for herself.

She does notice smaller things that Bellamy does now, though. 

He kisses the side of her head when she comes into Grounders. He walks her to her apartment that she shares with Raven and Wells.

He is always there. 

He fills up spaces and he makes her heart rush and calm down at the same time. He makes her feel so many things at once.

So it surprises her that on a Wednesday in October, he asks her if she can watch Octavia because Roma has been complaining about them not spending enough time together.

She didn’t even know they were still together. 

“Sure.” She mumbles off as she takes a sip of her caramel vanilla latte. 

Her heart flips.

She ignores it.

Bellamy is her friend. Her person. He is nothing more. She won’t let him be. 

…  
...

Wells still has a scar from the gunshot. She can’t look at it but Raven and Octavia think it’s cool.

Octavia jumps whenever she sees it and asks him if it hurts. 

Wells like to tell people the only thing that hurt was the thought of dying in front of his best friend. He doesn’t voice this to Octavia though. He only shakes his head and then asks her to dance with him in their small living room to Ray Charles.

Octavia laughs as Wells spins her.

For a brief moment she thinks about seeing this moment years and years ago with Wells and his mother. When she looks at Wells face, she knows he’s thinking about the same thing.

They eat dinner and then they all head off to bed. 

Octavia lays next to her and if she listens, she can hear their hearts beating in sync. 

“Clarke.” A whisper. 

She turns her eyes to Octavia’s. “Yes?” 

Octavia is quiet for a few moments before she lets out a breath. “I’m happy Bellamy has you now.” 

“Me too.” She says this hours later when Octavia is asleep and dreaming of whatever it is thirteen-year olds dream of.

...

When she’s home for Christmas break when she’s twenty-one, she runs into Lexa Woods.

Her heart races as she comes to a stop on the sidewalk. Lexa says something into her phone before she drops it into her coat pocket. “Clarke.” 

She thinks back to when Lexa used to moan her name underneath bed sheets and in dark alleys. “Lexa.”

Lexa cut her hair now. It’s short and it lies right above her collarbone. It suits her. “How have you been?” 

She talks about New York and she talks about the passing of her father. She talks about Wells and the night she almost lost him.

Lexa talks about UNC and her fiancée, Costia. 

“How did you know?." She pauses, wrinkles her nose. "That you loved her, I mean.” 

Lexa smiles and it’s all teeth. “I just woke up one day and knew.” 

“Knew what?” 

“Whatever I wasn’t sure of when I was with you.”

...  
...

On New Years Eve, Bellamy sends her a pixelated video of Octavia jumping up and down as the ball drops. 

They are in Times Square and she wishes more than anything that she was there, too.

“Love you, Clarke!” Octavia screams into the camera as she waves. 

She replays it over and over. 

...  
...

Raven and Wells get married in May. 

Raven doesn’t have any parents left and Wells’ dad refuses to come, saying that he’s too young and that he can do better.

None of those things get in the way, though.

They smile and they dance and they laugh.

And she is there for the whole thing.

...  
...

In June she decides that she needs to move out and get her own place. 

“That’s just dumb.” Bellamy says as he rolls his eyes. “You can stay with us.” 

Her eyes grow wide and she drops her pen. 

They are currently in Central Park. Octavia is a few feet away from them reading her summer reading, Bellamy is writing his admission essay for grad school at NYU and she is doodling in a notebook. Well she was. 

“Live with you.” She sits up. “Like live with you and Octavia. Like-.”

“Yes.” Bellamy replies, slightly out of breath. He cuts her off because he _knows_ her. “Live with us as in sleep in the guest room that isn’t really a guest room and live there and have it be yours.”

She bites her tongue. “What about Roma?” 

Bellamy and Roma went Facebook official last week. 

She didn’t like the relationship change, not that she thinks Bellamy noticed. 

Bellamy shrugs. “She knows that you’re my best friend.” 

She bites her tongue. Yes, she wants to get out of her apartment with Wells and Raven because they deserve their privacy and yes, she doesn’t want to live alone but she feels like that will make things complicated. Not so much for Bellamy and Roma but for herself.

But she says yes, anyway.

...  
...

She moves in on the hottest day of the summer.

Octavia groans. Bellamy sweats and she burns from the sun.

They get pizza for dinner and smile the entire night.

...  
...

Bellamy gets into grad school. 

He rushes home to tell her and spins her around in the kitchen. He goes to kiss her cheek but she moves her head, causing him to catch the corner of her mouth.

She thinks about their kiss in the bathroom. How Bellamy breathed into her lungs.

When he pulls away and sets her on the ground, she knows from his face that he was thinking of the same thing.

...  
...

Her mother comes up in October for a business meeting.

Her mother found a new way to save someone from a heart attack. She thinks it’s slightly ironic that her mother spent most of her life breaking hearts only to master in repairing them with her hands.

“So, this is where you live.”

The apartment is small but she likes it. She likes that Octavia’s and her drawings are hung up on the fridge. She likes that they all use post-its to write messages about where they are and what they need from the store. 

“Yeah.” She realizes this is the first time her mother ever visited her while she was away at school. “This is where I live.”

“It’s nice.” It’s a lie and they both know it. “You live with a boy and his little sister?” 

“Bellamy and Octavia.” Her mother’s eyes widen at her defensive tone. She doesn’t care. 

Her mother clasps her hands in front of her.

It grows silent.

She wants to ask her where it all went wrong. When her father wasn’t enough for her. When she wasn’t enough for her but she doesn’t. 

They go to lunch and then they don’t talk for another six months.

...  
...

Raven and Wells have Thanksgiving at their new apartment. 

It’s smaller but nicer than the one they all shared together. She likes the hardwood floors and she like the white curtains that Raven made in the living room. 

She likes that her friends are safe. She likes that they are happy.

Octavia is playing on her new iPhone. Bellamy and Roma are sitting on the couch and she is laughing at Wells as he spins her and Raven around in the kitchen.

Everything is good, even though she catches Bellamy’s eyes and doesn’t know what the look on his face means.

...  
...

She meets Atom Green in her last education class.

They are taking methods together and he makes her laugh.

She hasn’t been with someone for so long that she forgets what it’s like.

On their first date, he gets his hands down her pants. She’s sweating and panting as she says, “This can’t be anything more.” 

He agrees and makes her come again and again.

...  
...

It’s an unspoken rule not to bring people over when Octavia is home.

She knows this but the roads are horrible and Atom lives all the way across town. She doesn’t think twice when she has him sleep in her room.

However, when they are awake and having breakfast, Bellamy doesn’t acknowledge them and slams the door when he leaves for work.

Her heart bursts at the noise and doesn’t calm down until she’s alone in the apartment.

She doesn’t see Atom again.

...  
...

On the second anniversary of her father’s death, she buys new paint and a canvas.

She covers her room in paint cans.

She doesn’t leave her room the entire day.

...  
...

“Want to know something?” Octavia is fourteen. She wears make-up now and clothes that Bellamy thinks are too tight. 

“What’s that?” They are strolling along finishing up their Christmas shopping. She got Raven a new toolbox engraved with her initials, Wells a limited edition of Ray Charles on vinyl and Octavia some make-up and dresses. She doesn’t know what to get Bellamy, though. 

Octavia looks slightly mischievous, which is pretty common lately. “I was looking on Bell’s phone.” She lets out a breath. “He was looking at engagement rings.”

She halts and stares at Octavia. Snow is falling all around them. “What?” 

Octavia’s brow twists up in confusion, the same way Bellamy’s does. “I mean – I think that’s what he was doing. He never closes out of his apps. He’s been dating Roma forever.” 

She looks away. She likes Roma. She knows that she treats Bellamy well but, she just didn’t think they would get married.

“Clarke?”

She turns her head and forces a smile. She opens her mouth but a group of carolers cut her off. 

Her heart races until she falls asleep, hours later.

...  
...

On Christmas she opens a little blue box from Bellamy. He had gotten her a small necklace with little silver locket.

She peeked and saw that he had gotten Roma concert tickets and her favorite bottle of bourbon. 

She sleeps easy that night.

...  
...

Roma and Bellamy break up on a Tuesday.

The front door slams and Bellamy throws something at the wall. 

She takes a few deep breaths before she emerges from her room. Bellamy is standing by the door, his shoulders rising and falling quickly. 

He’s angry. She can tell without even looking at his face.

“Bellamy?” 

He turns and gives her a weak smile. The small cut above his lip from when he was younger clearer to her than usual. “Hey. Sorry to wake you.”

She realizes then that it’s almost midnight. She turns her head and waits for Octavia’s door to open but it never does. She turns back toward Bellamy. “Is everything alright?” 

He takes a few minutes. He laughs. She turns her head in confusion. “Sorry. I just. I don’t know.”

“What happened?” 

“Roma dumped me.” He says flatly as he looks at the ground. He lets out a breath. “She dumped me because she said I’m in love with you.” 

Her eyes grow wide and her heart isn’t beating as quickly as she thinks it should. If anything, it’s remaining constant and slow and normal. “What?” 

He looks at her then. “I guess I kind of am. I don’t know.” 

“You don’t know?”

“No.” He lets out another harsh breath. “I know I do I just don’t know what I should do about it.”

She doesn’t think. “Kiss me.”

He lets out a breath. “Clarke-.”

“Kiss me.” Her tone is firm. Her heart is strong. “And we’ll figure the rest out later.”

He looks at her and before she knows it, he’s surrounding her. His hands come up to cup her cheeks and his breath is on her face. This time when he kisses her, he takes her breath away. 

It’s soft and rough and it blows every other kiss before this moment out of the water.

...  
...

Raven calls her two days later in the middle of the night. 

She groans and feels Bellamy stir beside her at the noise. Her heart races at what happened the last time this happened in her life. Someone was dead. Wells was locked in a bathroom. 

She breathes out and sits up in bed as she accepts the call. “Rae?”

Raven is crying into the phone. _“Can you come get me?”_

...  
...

Raven is waiting outside her engineering lab. 

There is a slight scowl on her lips and her cheeks are covered in water. 

She’s in a pair of Bellamy’s sweatpants and her rain boots. She doesn’t want to imagine what her hair looks like. She quickly crosses the road and come face to face with Raven. “What’s going on?”

Raven lets out a slightly startled breath but then talks so quickly she can barely pick up the words. She was working late. She realizes she was late. She took a test and it was positive.

“You’re pregnant?” 

Raven is silent for a minute and then she nods. “That’s that the test says.”

“What’s wrong?” 

Raven sighs. “We’re twenty-two, Clarke! I have one more year left of school. Wells has like five more years left and I don’t know. I’ll fuck it up.”

She brings her hands to Raven’s shoulders. “There’s no way you could fuck this kid up. You know why?” Raven nods. “This baby is going to have the best parents. Parents that will be there for everything.” She pauses. “And when you do fuck up, I’ll be there.”

Raven scoffs and hits her shoulder. She laughs slightly but then grows serious. “You’ll be there for all of it, right?”

“Every second of it.”

...  
...

Raven tells Wells she’s pregnant the next day.

She gets a video of Wells crying at the news, like she knew he would.

She saves it.

...  
...

Bellamy takes her on their first official date two weeks later. 

School got in the way but now things are dying down and as much as she enjoys kissing around the house and at the coffee shop, she loves being in public with Bellamy like this.

He takes her to a restaurant named Serendipity and they share a sundae after dinner. 

On the walk back to their apartment, he holds her hand.

“So, how are my chances of getting lucky tonight?” 

She rolls her eyes. “With that line, your chances became fairly low.” She halts and he does too. She grows serious. He picks up on this. “I want this to be real.”

“It is.” His voice is soft and loud. “I’m in this. All the way.”

“Me too.” She lets out a breath. “I – I.”

“I know.” He says as he kisses her forehead, pulling her into his side as they walk home. “Me too.”

...  
...

That night, Bellamy is above her. 

He consumes her. 

He breathes in her air and breathes out his own.

It’s beautiful and slow and more romantic and passionate than anything she could draw or write.

He kisses her nose before he pushes into her. Then he speeds up, causing her to moan out but he catches the sound with his mouth.

She knows she loves him when it’s silent afterwards and the only noise she can hear is their heartbeats together in sync.

...  
...

Raven has a girl in November. 

They name her Camilla after Wells mother.

She’s so beautiful and small that she’s afraid she’s going to drop her. Bellamy smiles down at her and Octavia cries beside her. 

She wishes that Wells' mother and her father were with them. But when she catches Wells smile and returns it with her own, she knows they are. 

...  
...

One day, she lays in Central Park alone.

She can hear children laughing, people singing, the world moving. 

She feels her heart beating in her chest and she smiles up at the sun.

...  
...

They grow back together. 

Octavia finishes high school and graduates with honors. Raven becomes a well-known engineer who’s known for wearing her child strapped to her chest as she works. Wells becomes a politician and he fights for the public and gun control. Bellamy becomes a history professor but he still works at Grounders on the weekends. She becomes a high school art teacher. 

She doesn’t talk to her mother except through Christmas cards once a year. 

She visits her father’s grave on his birthday every year. She leaves a can of paint.

When she’s twenty-seven, she visits her father with her daughter.

Her daughter laughs and giggles as she pulls at the grass.

She turns her head and see’s Bellamy far off in the distance with Wells, Raven, Camilla and Octavia. 

She knows all the bones and organs in the human body.

She loves the heart, most.

...  
...

**Author's Note:**

> [Thanks again for reading! Come find me on tumblr: **augustusblakee** ]


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